A Book and Blog about Life

I HAD to Write This Blog; But It’s a Blog Virtually Everyone Will Hate

The path of this prose will seem meandering and random. But it is not.

Like a river whose path is dictated by numerous forces acting in both obvious and not so obvious ways, so too are these words. A river’s motion is defined by gravity, geography, momentum, gradients and material properties; but it is also influenced by the rotation of our planet, the pull of the moon, the magnetic force generated by our deep planetary ionized liquid metal thermal core, and more. Just as in life, there are obvious influences and subtle influences. Some we see, others we do not. But none of it is random.

What is Intelligence?

People define intellect in so many ways. But all of these definitions are unnecessarily complex. I will define intelligence in the simplest manner possible:

Intelligence is simply the absence of random.

To overcome the random order of things requires energy and thought – intelligence. It is impossible to overcome random without intellect.

Our universe is not random. It is orderly and precise.

Our lives are not random. At times it may seem so, as we meander like a river, like water, pulled by forces beyond that which seems to be controllable by our own lives. But the path of our river is still known and the final destination still certain, despite its many twists and turns.

But unlike a river, our bends and twists are mostly determined by our own conscious decisions, especially the biggest pivots. We get to mostly decide how the river flows.

The most important question of our lives is this: If things are not random, then what does the alternative mean?

I’ll let you decide that for yourselves. I know what the answer is for me. It is the same answer for all.

It doesn’t matter what you or anyone else believes. Sorry to burst everyone’s self-importance bubble. Reality and truth never yields to anyone’s wishes or hopes or beliefs. It is as constant as light.

We can only choose one of three options: Denial. Embrace. Or Delusion – the creation of our own fantasized “reality”.

Most of the world is really good at two of the three.

Earth, Wind, Fire and Water

Last night I was thinking about today’s scientific truths. A number of months ago, I wrote a blog about today’s basic scientific understanding. In a blog entitled The Homeless Philosopher: Free Will is the Monkey Wrench in our Universe, I wrote, “Thousands of years ago, people thought there were 4 basic elements: earth, wind, fire and water. It seemed reasonable. It was logical. They were absolutely convinced it was right…”

“…Thousands of years from now, if humans haven’t killed everything by then, people will laugh at our understanding of the world. There are 4 fundamental forces of nature that tie everything together: gravity, electromagnetism, strong and weak nuclear forces. You’re considered a scientific nutcase today if you don’t believe this…I promise you this idea of these 4 fundamental forces of nature will be just as laughable millennia from now as earth, wind, fire and water!”

My point?

Don’t drink too much Koolaid. It’s so easy to believe “today” we are so much smarter and wiser and knowledgeable. Tomorrow, people will laugh at yesterday and believe exactly the same thing: they are so much smarter, wiser and knowledgeable.

Progress is born of skepticism.

Consciousness

People, even expert scientists, mistakenly believe that consciousness, self-awareness, is merely the byproduct of extreme intellect.

It is not.

Consciousness is independent of intellect. And I will explain what I mean shortly, because this is so contrary to everyone’s thinking.

Self-awareness is not consciousness. A relatively dumb artificial intelligent machine can be programmed with relative ease to be “self-aware”. But is not conscious, nor will it ever be conscious.

A highly intelligent entity – an artifical intelligent machine – that can reason, and “think” will never gain consciousness, even if it is fully self-aware.

Self-awareness is the byproduct of intellect. It breeds selfish tendencies, a fight for its own survival.

Consciousness, on the other hand, extends beyond merely our self-awareness and survival, to encompass the bigger picture. From consciousness we derive intangibles such as empathy, love, selflessness, happiness, and even hate.

Emotion is an inherent part of consciousness. Biologists mistakenly believe emotion is the manifestation of chemicals – hormones – acting on our physical bodies. But I believe this is completely wrong. It is much more.

Our brain – the reservoir of our consciousness – trigger physical catalysts, such as hormones and chemicals, which alter our physical bodies to enable mood and feeling. The chemicals may be the physical triggers which enable emotion, but that doesn’t mean it is purely a physical phenomenon. Emotion is an intimate part of our conscious being, our eternal definition. Chemicals are the translators that interact with our spiritual consciousness and physical reality.

If you believe everything is random, beyond our control, the creation of happenstance, you are living in your own fabricated delusional reality.

Simple observation, and scientific and mathematical understanding, will quickly uncover that the opposite is true.

Nothing is random in our universe.

Evolution could very well be true. But it was not the product of pure randomness.

If you believe the evolution of life was the sequential combination of trillions of tiny steps, all happening by random combination and chance, you’re really insane. You are the most delusional and closed minded person there is. Completely brainwashed. I’m sorry, my friends, if this is offensive.

Let’s just step out of the forest, stop being blinded by the thick of trees, and ask ourselves: Does random anything create anything complex?

The formation of our universe – however it all started – was clearly not random. Natural laws dictate the movement and flow of everything. This is undeniable.

So why do we assume life evolved by random order? Trillions of tiny steps all conspiring to create life?

In chapter 9, The Perfect Symphony, I outline the mathematical impossibility of this feat. Other notable Evolutionists have reluctantly admitted the same mathematical impossibility. It really is impossible for life to begin, driven by pure random order. There had to be some intelligence somewhere, somehow affecting the outcome. Absolutely had to. Zero possibility the alternative could be truth.

People are so easily blinded by partial facts and incomplete information, that they so willingly base this to extrapolate a different scientific truth; an assumption that vehemently defies the immutable laws of mathematics. I will be emphatic in my statement: evolutionary scientists and intellectuals are so wrong, it’s embarrassing. Flawed logic can convince us of virtually any truth we want to believe; have to believe.

I wish I could tell you all why we all exist. But I don’t know why. But we do exist. We are real. And it was not by random chance.

So many different religions, many opposing each other; how are we to know which is right? Should we choose the most popular? The least popular? The one that makes us “tingle” inside?

In my life experience, popularity has been a horrible indicator of rightness or truth.

All I can say, when you are lost at sea, confused by the darkeness of the wavy waters, directionless due to the thousands of identical looking twinkling stars, all we can do is to be steadfast and guided by the one thing we know is always true: The North Star.

In my life, I’ve discovered this North Star is simply Love.

Loving others, everyone, equally or more than yourself is the single hardest thing to do in our lives. We are all horrible at this. In my opinion, this must mean it is the one thing that defines goodness, rightness, absolute truth.

Forget about heaven or hell. The reasons to love, to treat others with kindness equally, should never be about eternal reward or damnation. It should just be the way it is, for no other reason than that.

If you do something “good”, hoping to be rewarded by eternal paradise, you are nothing more than a rat in a cage, conditioned to perform tricks, to modify behavior on the hopes of eternal “food”.

You are not a rat. We are all so much more. So behave like it. Do something purely out of your true FREE WILL. Do something right and good just because it is the way the world and life should be – for no other reason, here in this life, or any supposed afterlife.

Love, because it is what we were meant to do.

Religion and War

Religion, specifically Islam, is at the forefront of everyone’s minds these days.

I’ve often wondered, are the extremists right? Not because I sympathize with what they preach or the violence they spew, but because I always want to challenge my own thinking. Being right or wrong merely depends on our perspective in many ways.

What makes radical Islam wrong and our Western position of secular tolerance right?

First, to be clear, we need to set out a couple not-so-obvious facts. Yes, the radical extremists are brainwashed by religious hatred. But the West is also brainwashed, however offensive this may sound. If you read on, we will expand on this some more.

Don’t draw conclusions before you do soul searching introspective analysis, otherwise, what’s the point – you’re only reinforcing your own views and predispositions.

Some of the nicest and wonderful people I’ve met during my travels have been Muslim. They were kind, warm hearted, giving and caring people. But this has nothing to do with why I challenge my own positions and thinking.

Whether the radical’s or the secular western view on this war – and it clearly is a war that has been raging for decades, only more recently becoming more obvious – depends on one’s perspective of life. And there is about as large of a gap between the two views as one could ever imagine. Perhaps the widest of any ideological difference fueled war in human history.

Radical Islam believes everything should focus on the afterlife – that this life is about testing us to make sure we live as “holy” of a life as defined by the Quran.

Western secularism is focused pretty much all on this life – here and now. Let God judge the afterlife. Even western Christianity is largely secular nowadays:

Capitalism – the pursuit of riches. Competition, only the strong survive; the weak wither and die. Hippocratic morality – defined only by “do no harm” but largely devoid of spirituality. Rampant pornography culture. Open sexuality and LGBT rights and gay marriage. Hollywood entertainment culture. Consumerism. Materialism. The “i” culture as epitomized by Apple and technology gadgets to make everything about our lives easy and comfortable for me.

We preach religious tolerance, while in the same breath we demean and disrespect religion constantly. We poke fun at those who hold fervent Christian views. We label ideological Muslims as crazies. We only respect some vague ambiguous label called spirituality which nobody has any idea what the hell it even means. Listen to media. Listen to popular TV culture and late night comedy and you can readily see these truths.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but this pretty much sums up western culture and philosophy, right? This is what I call the intellectual secularism of the West. Over the past few decades it has accelerated to the Left.

And through Hollywood, music, social media, and imperialistic political policy, we push this way of life to the rest of the world – whether they want it or not. “It’s for their own good.” American democracy. American culture.

Believe me, I’ve been to so many countries and it’s quite obvious. Americanism is everywhere.

Now contrast this with a fundamentalist Muslim’s view: Very conservative sexual morality. Deprioritization of money and individual freedoms, but focusing on personal sacrifice for the benefit of the afterlife. It is diametrically opposed to everything America and the West stands for, believes and pushes.

Is it a wonder we are at war?? Is it any wonder we cannot understand the other?

Do we realize just how serious this gap is? What is driving this hatred of our way of life? Why the East feels this is a fundamental battle of their very survival and existence??

Until the West comes to realize this, this war will rage. It will only intensify and expand immensely. The hatred and misunderstanding will only grow.

The radical Muslims aren’t pushing their lifestyle on the West. Only the West is pusing our views everywhere.

If you were in their shoes, and you believed your very existence was at risk, what would you do? Raging conventional war against a clearly superior military isn’t possible. What would you do to survive? To protect your cherished way of life, and EVERYTHING you hold dear and important? What would you do?? Especially if you truly believed this life wasn’t as important as the afterlife? That protecting the religion and faith was the most important thing in this life? What would you do?

I don’t agree with radical Islam or their terrorist tactics, but I can intellectually understand their position and thinking – they’ve been backed into a small corner, without options, against a far superior beast.

If you can’t understand this, you are no better than the brainwashed terrorists; blinded by western culture and media.

Here is the biggest problem with today’s western Liberalism: They preach tolerance, as long as it’s tolerating what they believe, while they continually disrepect more conservative views and thinking they disagree with. They want everyone to accept their lifestyle and ways of thinking, but refuse to accept other’s with completely different views.

Liberal universities are afraid to even have controversial conservative or Christian speakers come to their campus and speak. Political correctness is the mighty club of the Left that silences everyone who disagrees.

But is this really tolerance? Is this being open-minded, something supposedly at the core of Liberalism? Or is this merely a different form of intolerance??

The greatest danger is that the agenda of the Left is one way – pushing their beliefs and way of life – while they handily reject other’s views and continually mock them.

Throughout human history, this exact behavior has always generated resentment and hatred, and ultimately violence. It’s ironic that these self professed “intellectuals”, these liberals, fueled by the thousands of years of relegation, now seem so eager to grasp their moment, and damn the consequences.

I am an incredibly open minded and accepting person. If someone wants to be gay, congratulations. I’m happy for you, even if it’s not for me. We should all embrace who you are. I only care about what’s inside your heart – what kind of a human being are you?

But understand, being gay is nothing to be more proud or less proud of than a heterosexual. Don’t flaunt your gayness in disrespect to those who morally disagree. It’s ok for some to think homosexuality is morally wrong. Even if this makes you boil inside. Respect other’s religion!!! Don’t just demand that others who are religious respect your homosexuality. It goes both ways.

Paris

The recent terrorist attacks in Paris wasn’t a “game” changer as so many have claimed, but merely a notable stop along the path of our destiny. It really wasn’t a surprise such an horrific event could unfold in the heart of a major western city.

My heart certainty goes out to the victims and families.

The extremists have been playing the same “game” for decades now. Periodically, the West wakes up after something horrific like 9/11 or Paris, unloads a few bombs, announces some press releases of terrorist leaders killed by American drones, and then we all feel like we can go back to life as normal. The threat vanquished.

Barely a few years removed from 9/11 and the pendulum of public opinion had already started swinging the other way. Bush went from hero to villain, virtually overnight. Support for war evaporated faster than cold beer on a blistering Arizona summer day. The bungling of Iraq only hastened his demise.

The West still does not comprehend the threat, nor what is required to eliminate this threat. We are still in denial. We believe we can go on with life as usual once we simply tighten up a few security weak points, and prevent Syrian refugees from crossing our borders.

The Syrian crisis is a thousand times worse than Iraq. It is the failure of policy that will cripple the Obama legacy. Surely Iraq and Syria are related, but had both Bush and Obama handled the Iraq war differently, Syria would not be the mess it is today. Although this war on terror would still happen regardless at some point in time – it is an inevitable clash of destinies and doctrine between east and west.

Iraq was a localized problem. Syria will transform the world.

I wrote a year ago in my book that this war on terrror, radical Islam, will go on for decades and perhaps a century or more. I said Russia, China and the entire West would become enveloped in this new global war. It’s clear Russia is now fully immersed due to the downing of the Russian civilian airliner by ISIS – an indirect result of a political gamble to prop up Assad, leading to grave consequences. I’m sure many laughed when I made my prognostication. China will soon follow in coming years.

I’ve said before this war cannot be won. It cannot ever be contained. It can only be ended if and when the West begins to really understand and respect the completely different philosophy that we vehemently disagree with.

But let me play devil’s advocate for a moment.

We all decry terrorism because it kills innocent people. It seems so simple, so black and white to us in the West.

But at the same time, we drop bombs and kill far more innocent people than the terrorists could ever dream. We justify this by saying, it is war, and we are protecting our security and our way of life.

But shouldn’t we be objective and fair? Aren’t the radicals doing the same thing as we are?

In their eyes, the enemy is evil western culture, that spreads like a virus in their eyes, contaminating their ability to define a fundamental religious lifestyle. In their eyes, the enemy is the entire West, as long as it represents an existential threat to their way of life.

Who Is Right?

It’s easy to quickly say the terrorists are wrong and evil. But we don’t see the personal consequences of the thousands of American and western bombs dropped in the Middle East, killing countless thousands of innocent lives – in addition to the enemy.

Is our killing of innocents more justified than the radicals? Why? Because they attacked us first on 9/11? Why did they attack us? We aren’t absolved of responsibility.

A term comes to mind: moral equivalence.

Our killing is no more or less right than theirs. We employ sophisticated million dollar bombs to kill because we have money; the terrorists use cheap homemade explosives, guns and knives to wreck havoc on our society.

Having said all that, do I believe this war on terror is justified? Yes. I just think it’s critical for us to understand the other’s perspectives.

When I saw the photos of Bin Laden, in his eyes, I saw pure evil and hatred. There was not a single shred of love or goodness. These people hide behind a strict religion, using the medium to manipulate and control people who mostly truly want to live what they view as a holy life.

It’s the same old game leaders have been playing for thousands of years. And the cost is always at the expense of the peasants.

But we should not misunderstand today’s threats. It is not merely the uneducated peasants that are fighting this jihad. Many are highly educated and raised in western society – disillusioned by our superficial culture. And let’s be frank, it is a superficial culture.

Where Do We Go From Here?

Millions will eventually die from this war on terror. It will be global. And the battlefront will expand far beyond the Middle East.

It’s a war of diametrically opposed philosophies, a rebirth of the Holy Crusades, but with a far greater conviction and sense of urgency, and bigger threat.

It is simply a matter of time before terrorists obtain and use large scale weapons; the least likely is nuclear.

This war is unwinnable. The only way to win is utter annihilation, extermination, which the West will never do as I’ve stated in a previous blog. Even if a million people are killed in NYC, it will not happen.

If I were a terrorist leader, I would go after capitalism – the heart of democracy. I would cripple American and western businesses one small prick at a time. Starbucks, McDonald’s, Apple stores, etc. Once a week around the world, an attack would occur. Like clockwork. It would never end.

Some would argue, why mention this? It’s not rocket science. It’s not like the terrorists don’t have a brain or this is such a original thought.

Both sides are getting deeper and deeper down a path where there is no alternative; no way out.

The eventual outcome will be two things: the end of western, free and open society as we know it; and the decimation (not extermination) of radical Islamist religion. But not until both sides have lost everything they value most.